Health Insurance QuestionFollow

Shut up and let me keep fetishizing the private sector. I'm about to ***.

Not really. The USPS's main facet is letter delivery (especially bulk rate stuff, i.e. junk mail). Fed-Ex, UPS, etc specialize in package delivery and in rapid delivery.

DMV's are a state-by-state affair. The ones in Illinois are actually pretty good these days following a major overhaul to the system a while back. The last time I needed to renew my license was in March. On a Saturday morning it took me about 20min to walk in, talk to the right people, fill out the right forms, get my picture taken and walk out the door with a shiny new license. Four years before that it was even quicker since IL allows drivers with clean records to just fill out a form, mail it in and get an extension sticker to place on their license making it good for four more years.

So if your argument is that the Auto Club is even easier than mailing a check and getting four years added to your license, you have an excellent point. Our registration is mail in. Emissions testing is done for free at multiple centers throughout the area and, these days, is a five minute affair involving them hooking up to the engine computer. In the old days, it was a ten minute affair of them hooking up a computer to your tailpipe.

There's plenty of fine public universities. A degree from University of Illinois is worth more than one from a dozen area private colleges I could name. Not that you'd recognize any of them given that non-impressive private schools are a dime a dozen.

I'm aware that the USPS delivers packages. However, package delivery is not the meat and bread of their business. You'd be more accurate to compare them to telegram companies. When was the last time you sent a telegram?So what? You're trying to prove that comedians are unoriginal?Ok. So we've shown that an agency which is handled by the state can be good or bad depending on the state running it. Not sure what to tell you there.I don't even know what you're trying to argue here. Are you saying that any random private college is, on average, better than any public college?I can mail a letter to anywhere in the continental United States in about 2-3 days for less than fifty cents and have an excellent chance of it arriving in the same condition I sent it in. I'm fairly certain you won't find me a private service offering the same.

With private insurance, I represent nothing more than an opportunity for the cmpany to try to squeeze the maximum amount of profit from me while providing the absolute least amount of service without me hitting a breaking point of leaving the insurance plan. Because most people's insurance is pooled through their place of employment, the insurance company knows that I can not easily select another plan thus they can squeeze me even harder and provide even less service. I am nothing more than dollar signs to them and every penny they have to spend on keeping me healthy represents a penny lost to them. Therefore, they will do everything in their power to not spend a single penny on me unless they absolutely have to.

A public option would give people an affordable place to go when the private insurance company is busy trying to **** me over on whether or not they believe I need that gastric scan (never mind the doctor called for it) because, ya know, those things aren't cheap and it's their opinion that maybe I should just take some medication for six months and see how that goes (never mind the doctor already dismissing that option as not going to work). And I'm supposed to be afraid of a government plan?
Just to be clear on this: bad jokes about the DMV are enough to dismiss any positive examples of the state running the DMV but I assume "rent-a-cop" jokes won't be sufficent to dismiss this?This is a joke right? Borders is slowly going bankrupt and is slashing their inventories and floor sizes while trying to fill real estate with papercraft supplies.

Barnes & Noble was rated "underperforming" by Merril Lynch and is a recommended "not buy" because of dropping profits. Libraries, incidentally, are not comparable since they don't take in money (aside from fines) and are dependant upon local and state money to fund them. They are enjoying quite a resurgance in today's climate as people rediscover "Hey, I can get books and CDs and movies and even video games from this place for free rather than go to Borders or Blockbuster".

This brings up an amusing "full circle" point though. Part of what's killing Borders and Barnes & Noble is online purchasing through Amazon. Buy a book through Amazon.com lately? Tell me... did they ship it UPS, Fed-Ex, DHL or... USPS? Which do you think is their most common package courier?

Edited, Jun 28th 2009 7:47pm by Jophiel

I believe that he's arguing that the public perception of private versus public education will cockblock the opportunities of anyone attending a public university, regardless of the quality of the specific education, and that we should accept this to be true and not attempt to correct the erroneous perception.



I worked for Chapter 11 Books once: "Prices so low, you'd think we'd go bankrupt."

Guess what ******* happened? It was hilarious.

Been in a Border's lately? The one near me removed most of their center display tables, thinned their shelves by about 10-15% and removed an entire large corner's worth of book merchandise in order to sell wrapping paper and scrapbooking supplies. Given the large nature of the store, it looks cavernous and empty.

I might have thought this was unique except another forum I go on had a "WTF is up with Borders?" thread where folks all over the country were reporting in their their's was undergoing the same treatment.

There's also the point that those esteemed private schools are still non-profit entities.

If you want to compare them to private insurance companies, maybe you should compare them to for-profit schools? Which one sounds more impressive on a resume, University of Michigan or University of Phoenix?

c'mon - a convincing argument! Too bad that in a forum post you can't convey the inflection of a burly, blue collar New Yorker saying it. That'd make it really work: "c'maaahhnnnnnn"

One thing I find especially humorous about insurance companies is the issue of gastric bypass or lap-band surgeries. (I don't like these, but I like to run after work so I'm probably not the target demographic of these procedures.) Due to there being a minimum weight for the insurance company to consider covering it, a family member of mine actually went on eating binges to deliberately gain weight to lose weight. It was on the order of 10-20 pounds, so it was likely not terribly significant to the doctor considering the amount of weight to be lost.

I love bureaucrats.

Edited, Jun 29th 2009 12:24am by Sweetums

Jophed,

I guess you forgot to quote this from this obviously biased TIME piece;



See how that attitude can skew the results of some college satisfaction index?

How about




The end of the article brings Times agenda to the point;



Attack conservatives while pushing socialized healthcare.




Now allow me to post a bit more recent source;





Yeah govn healthcare sounds great.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/04/AR2007030401394_2.html



But Like I said in my previous post if you want a good example of govn healthcare go and talk to some veterans at your local VA. Or are you scared to discover the truth?









Edited, Jun 29th 2009 10:11am by publiusvarus

Edited, Jun 29th 2009 10:11am by publiusvarus

There's certainly a lot of work to be done. That's what happens when a valuable program languishes under not-so-benign neglect.



The guy in charge likened suicide to cancer - it "happens". Nothing to be done about it! No effective prevention, screening, nope, won't help so failing to do it is not negligent.

Compassionate conservatism, my ***.

My grandfather used the V.A. to help with his medical care and he was allowed to see a private physician for most things (since the hospital was so far away) I believe he just had to visit the V.A. once per year.

You know that the VA is the envy of the world when it comes to outcomes in certain areas of mental health (especially PTSD) - people from allover the world (including me) visit them to find out how come they deliver better results at lower cost than almost everywhere else.

When I speak to their clinicians, from front line doctors to corporate clinical leaders, they are all adamant that their strength is their freedom from the profit levers of private companies. Go figure.